The Cutting Crew

Cutting Crew began in 2000 by my brother Matt and his friend. They started the company doing small jobs in their free time, in addition to working their full-time jobs. When my brother's friend left, I helped Matt with jobs that he needed extra hands. It was at this time that my father and I officially joined forces with my brother as partners. As a husband and father of a 5-year-old and a newborn, I jumped at the opportunity thinking, "Who couldn't use a little extra cash?" Little did I know this was the start of my new dream career. Before Cutting Crew was my primary gig, I would catch the Metra train to downtown Chicago where I worked my "real" job at Hewlett Packard/Bank of America. However, the best part of my day was going outside and walking to various locations on service calls. I didn't even care it was ten below, at least I was out of the office. I'd return home around 4 p.m., pick up my equipment trailer and take care of my client's properties until dusk. In addition, we did larger landscaping jobs on the weekends. Between the three of us we covered territory between Chicago and the Northwestern and Southern suburbs. In 2003 my brother decided to leave our company to focus on his career and my father was quickly approaching retirement and parted as well. This left me with a difficult decision: keep the corporate job or take on the landscaping company full-time on my own. It was risky to start a new small business, but I had a good customer base and had grown so accustom to the hours I didn't even need an alarm clock anymore. Mostly I knew in my heart it was what I wanted to do, and I haven't looked back since.